About Me

Author of "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Rush Limbaugh's Assault on Reason," (limbaughbook.com). Also the author of "Barack Obama: This Improbable Quest" and "President Barack Obama: A More Perfect Union (www.obamapolitics.com), along with "Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies" (www.collegefreedom.org) and "Newt Gingrich: Capitol Crimes and Misdemeanors".

Friday, December 14, 2012

The "Right to Work" Myth

The “right to work” laws such as in Michigan are unfair, and hurt not just
unions, but all workers. But I'm interested in the rhetoric here, and
how this purely propagandistic term “right to work” is commonly
used in every news story and even by its opponents. The effect is
similar to what would happen if the nightly news routinely referred
to attacks on abortion rights as “right to save babies” laws. Who
could oppose the “right to work”?

The
“right to work” laws have nothing to do with the right to work,
because the union doesn't infringes on anyone's right to work. What
we're talking about is the right to freeload by not paying union
fees, not the right to work.

Under
normal law, if you don't want to join a union, you still have to pay,
in essence, a tax on your wages for the work that the union does on
your behalf. If you don't like the union, you're perfectly free to
oppose the union. You're free to urge your co-workers to elect
different leaders, or affiliate with a different union, or abolish
any union representation altogether. But it should be the collective
choice of all the workers. It simply can't work if anyone is free to
freeload.

The
analogy here is to paying taxes to the IRS. If you don't like
Congress, you're perfectly free to urge people to elect different
leaders. But no sane person imagines that you have a “right to
work” that includes the right not to have a portion of your wages
in taxes. So why is your “right to work” violated if a small part
of your income is taken away by a democratically-elected body that
promotes the common good through a union?

The
Republicans pushing for “right to work” don't actually believe in
a right to work (after all, it's not written anywhere in the US
Constitution). They want to destroy a political enemy by cutting off
their funds. The right to unionize—and the right not to be punished
for it by being forced to subsidize your slacker colleagues in “right
to work” states—is what's truly at stake here. The “right to
work” laws violate that fundamental right of association under the
First Amendment by burdening pro-union workers with a greater
financial burden that anti-union workers don't need to pay. In
essence, “right to work” is a tax on people who want to join
unions, and Republicans hope to kill unions by forcing their
supporters to overcome that barrier to free association.

If
you hate unions, then by all means critique them, attack them, and
rationally persuade workers to get rid of them. But don't use the
power of government to force an uneven playing field as a cynical
political ploy.